Eddie Owens Martin led what was perhaps one of the strangest lives we’ve come across on our journeys. In the 1930s, after years of living on the streets of New York, he came down with a severe case of pneumonia.

Despite being a California State Landmark, this folk art environment was dismantled. Luckily, some of the pieces were saved and can be seen in the California Route 66 Museum: “Hula Ville – Twentieth Century Folk Art”.

This jaw-dropping sculpture park is located on the the South Dakota Drift Prairie, with more than fifty industrial art sculptures. All created by Wayne Porter with scrap metal, old farm equipment, or railroad tie plates.

This gorgeous garden of grottos was built to honor Our Lady of Czestochowa, who came to be known as the Black Madonna because of the way she appeared in early paintings. Brother Bronislaus Luszcz literally did all the building here, using rocks, broken glass, and castoff jewelry to add to the splendor.

Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project is still the best known, thanks to the millions of polka dots with which he’s blanketed his neighborhood. Trees, houses, streets and sidewalks all dotted up in a downtrodden part of town he’s determined to help heal through the power of art.

Hartman Historical Rock Garden 1905 Russell Avenue at McCain Springfield, OH http://www.hartmanrockgarden.org Environment with rocks Recently restored by the Kohler Foundation, the Hartman Rock Garden is one of the most intriguing and revered works of in situ folk art, an outsider art phenomena where self-taught…

The Old Trapper’s Lodge – John Ehn 6201 Winnetka Avenue Woodland Hills, CA 818-347-0551 Sculpture environment John Ehn opened a motel in California in 1941, moving there from Michigan, where he had worked as a trapper. He hired a sculptor to make a huge statue…